And that word is “pneumonia”. That’s why I’ve
been out of circulation for just about three weeks. I went down to
Denver recently with my lovely and talented wife Cathy to watch the
Colorado Rockies play at beautiful Coors Field on three consecutive
days. It was like a trip to Disneyland. I returned to Fort Collins
deeply fatigued and with one of the sorest throats I’ve ever
experienced. A trip to UrgentCare produced the diagnosis. I’ve had
pneumonia a couple times before in my life, but I have now reached an
age at which I need to take it seriously. I spent the next several
days flat on my back in bed, unable to do anything more productive
than cough horribly and moan.

The worst part (for me, at least) is that all
sorts of events have been piling up that I felt it was important to
comment on. I observe that, despite a million minipundits whinging
about Trump’s frank straightforwardness (or his straightforward
frankness) and joggling the President’s elbows, we have yet to have a
nuclear war with North Korea. The guy probably knows what he’s doing.
Kim Song-Piggy is an authoritarian personality who just needs
bitch-slapping from time to time. It may help that his Chinese
leash-holders told him, “Piss America off, and you’re on your
own.”

I’m not going to comment in detail on the various
demonstrations and riotry. Anybody can see that those on the “right”
generally come to the party armed with the best intentions, while
those on the left come armed with baseball bats with nails driven
through them. Anyone who opposes free speech is a villain as far as
I’m concerned and my mortal enemy. I’ve been fighting censorship
since I wrote for my high school newspaper in the early 1960s. Yet
the Stalinist media continue to claim that the right wing is too
aggressive. Yesterday’s washed-up celebrities and various low-level
politicians continue to back their play. Thus the University, as
such, passes out of the chain of institutions that have traditionally
advanced the human condition. They have worn out their welcome, and
people are beginning to see what a waste and hoax the college degree
has become. An Associate’s degree from some poor-but-honest junior
college is a more respectable credential than a Harvard Ph.D.

In fact, something I’ve been meaning for some
time to take up in these pages is the spreading menace of “degreeism”
under which you can’t get a job, or advance from where you find
yourself, unless you possess an academic degree of some kind. It
doesn’t matter what this degree may be
in—Underwater Basketweaving is well thought of—just as long as you
have it. I wouldn’t be suprised if someday, in the near future, you
can’t get a book published without a degree, Given what our
universities and colleges have become, this is especially ludicrous.
Degreeism needs to be cast out of our culture like everry other form
of unreasoning bigotry.

But, as usual, I have digressed. Another thing
that happened as I was spending long sleepless nights and longer
empty days without being able to write is Hurricane Harvey. I don’t
know what I could have written that would have helped. I’m concerned
for my friends Scott and Iris and Shelley and others. All the time I
lived on the Gulf Coast, we never had a terrible event like this one,
although we drilled and prepared for them regularly on the Air Force
base (Hurlburt Field) we lived on. I have been in a flood, in 1997,
and it was just about the least fun you can imagine having. I notice
that everybody is laboring to make the response to Harvey as
different from Katrina as they can, and that’s good. Texans have
acquitted themselves admirably, and others have been very kind and
gallant to them. And there’s a benign use for helicopters, after
all.

I also notice that the usual tiny minds and
shriveled souls of the media scum-suckers and bottom-feeders who hate
Donald Trump for no discernible reason have taken it on themselves to
kvetch about the First Lady’s choice of footware while accompanying
her husband to Texas. If that isn’t as low as you can go, I don’t
know what is.

Which brings me to the most urgent topic, I
think, before us today. It appears that all of the “social media” we
use at the moment are run by snowflakes and halfwits who believe they
have a right to tell us what we can say and what we can’t. Google,
Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook have all been caught censoring some
people, kicking others out, and generally acting like Politically
Correct Hall Monitors. If a criticism gores their pet oxen (for
example, calling any Democrat a crook) that’s “hate speech”, whereas
they welcome the vivisection of any conservative or libertarian that
leftists want to pick on.

The only way to stop this nonsense is to stop
using these “services”, until they straighten up and fly right or go
broke. That’s why I will begin exploring alternatives immediately. I
first looked into Gab and was shocked at the bigoted and vicious
description of it in Wikipedia, something else I may look to
replacing in the near future.

And how was your August?

Publisher and Senior Columnist L. Neil Smith is the author of over
thirty books, mostly science fiction novels, L. Neil Smith has been
a libertarian activist since 1962. His many books and those of other
pro-gun libertarians may be found (and ordered) at L. Neil Smith’s
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE “Free Radical Book Store” The preceding
essays were originally prepared for and appeared in L. Neil Smith’s
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE. Use them to fight the continuing war
against tyranny.

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